


Mystery of the Bathhouse

by MegumitheGreat



Category: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Abandoned Building, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Child Abuse, Child Death, Ghosts, M/M, Mystery, Paranormal Investigators, modeoheim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:06:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25650016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MegumitheGreat/pseuds/MegumitheGreat
Summary: Cloud, Zack, and Reno are sent back to Modeoheim to figure out why the area was abandoned.  As they investigate, Cloud and Zack learn of something else that took place in the bathhouse.
Relationships: Zack Fair/Cloud Strife
Kudos: 20





	Mystery of the Bathhouse

**Author's Note:**

> Before anyone gets their panties in a twist, the warning comes from the fact that a lot of people these days do this to their kids and rarely is anything done to appropriately punish criminals.
> 
> I always wished you could go back to Modeoheim because I love abandoned buildings. I also wanted to give Cloud a chance (in Zack's presence) to not be a helpless whelp. So I think that worked out. It's terrible--as soon as Zack enters the picture, I can't help but think that Cloud becomes a little kitten behind him.

“Alright, Cloud, what’s the mission?” Zack asked like a true SOLDIER 1st Class.

“To investigate Modeoheim and explain what happened there,” Cloud answered him like a true infantryman. Sweet, short, to the point, and wanting to leave his best impression on his idol and best friend. “U-Uh, sir!”

Zack smiled at him with his hands on his hips. He was so proud of the young cadet that he stood up in the helicopter they were riding in and threw his arms around him. He knew that Cloud suffered from motion sickness in helicopters and other modes of transportation where he wasn’t able to see outside, so drilling him on the mission specs made him nervous enough to not thinking about as much as he would have liked to throw up.

Modeoheim was a Shin-Ra built and Shin-Ra owned snow village south of the resort town Icicle Inn. Engineers and scientists used to live there when the area had been marked for mako excavation. When monsters rolled in and killed many of them, the survivors abandoned the village and sought refuge in Icicle Inn. They lived in solitude, knowing that if Shin-Ra had found out that they left their post, they would be executed by kill squads.

Zack and Cloud remembered the first time that they had crash-landed in Modeoheim. The old bathhouse had been the site of a horrible memory, and Zack hated that he was being made to return there so soon after Angeal’s death by his hands. It was the only thing that made him want to abort the mission, but Cloud held onto his hand between their seats, acting as a pillar of support.

The two had a secret relationship where they took extra care not to show their affection in its purest form in front of other Shin-Ra employees. After all, workplace relationships got nasty when they were out in the open. Zack was popular among some of the female employees while Cloud was the punching bag in his rank. The most that they ever did in front of people was hug each other in a way that translated more of a bromance than a romance.

At night, however, Cloud would sneak to his superior’s room sometimes for pleasure and other times to vent about the other infantrymen. Looks were deceiving, and it always entertained Zack to see Cloud get upset with his fellow troops. Now that they were on a mission together back to Modeoheim, just the two of them and a Turk named Reno, they could deepen their relationship through camaraderie.

“You wanna hear a rumor about Modeoheim?” Reno asked them from the helicopter cockpit. He was the red-haired Turk that liked to fight dirty. The drawling of his voice gave Cloud the impression that he wasn’t very happy about being stuck with them, but Zack assured him that Reno was trustworthy. “Well? Better answer quick before we land.”

“Okay, sure, let’s hear it,” Zack replied.

Reno smirked. “They say that the real reason that all the Shin-Ra employees left Modeoheim wasn’t because of a monster. In fact, they didn’t actually leave; they were spirited away by a ghost. Every single person that left Modeoheim was last seen at the bathhouse before vanishing into this air. Man, and they’re sending us to go check it out.”

Zack wasn’t bothered by the rumor since that was all it was, but Cloud was visibly shaking. He didn’t like ghosts or ghost stories, and in all honesty, he should have seen such a story coming. The only good that came out of it? It definitely made sure that he wouldn’t get motion sickness in the helicopter.

Reno hovered the vehicle just outside of the abandoned village. There was no helipad in the area, so parking the helicopter on the outskirts of the village was the next best thing. Once landed, the three of them climbed out.

“Ah, shit,” Reno grumbled. “I forgot this place was cold as fuck.”

“How could you forget that?” Zack asked him. “It’s south of a place called Icicle Inn.”

“Yeah, yeah, shut up. Let’s just get this over with.”

Of the three of them, Cloud was the least bothered by the cold. Zack was used to warmer weather, but Gongaga had its share of little snow flurries in the winter every once in a while. Reno, having lived the cushy but still dangerous life of a Turk, wasn’t prepared to brave the cold. Thus, Zack advised him to try doing squats or other forms of exercise to warm himself up.

Scoffing at the idea, Reno led them into the ghost town. They split up to cover more ground. Zack and Cloud checked the few houses that were rusting from age and water that had frozen over on the metal roofs while Reno surveyed the open cul-de-sac area. He took down a few notes of things that looked out of place. Footprints were still evident, so someone had come recently. Whether that person was still alive was unknown. All he knew…was that…something was calling him…to the bathhouse.

“Hey, Reno, we ready to head into the bathhouse yet?” Zack called from base of the water tower. When he turned, he only saw Cloud. “Reno…? Cloud, have you seen him?”

“No, sir,” Cloud replied as he walked back to him. “Do you think he went on without us?”

With an exasperated sigh, Zack turned to the bathhouse up on the hill. He couldn’t believe that Reno would just leave them in the cold like that. The SOLDIER 1st Class grabbed the infantryman by the wrist, pulling him along. He didn’t put stock into the rumor, and it was more out of concern for Cloud, who was trying not to appear uneasy by the possibility of a ghost lying in wait.

When they arrived at the threshold of the bathhouse door, there was a creeping anxiousness in Cloud’s heart. He clutched his rifle, maneuvered his hand so that he was holding Zack’s hand instead of being dragged by the wrist. “Something’s really not right here,” he said.

“You can say that again,” Zack agreed. “Atmosphere here feels way heavier than outside.”

Cloud ventured in much to Zack’s surprise. The reception desk and stage area across from it were rotting and dusty, old cash registers and luggage sitting untouched for years. The payphone next to the desk blinked with voice mails. Zack made his way to the stage, looking around the stage for any clues about what had happened.

MESSAGE 1: ARE YOU GUYS STILL IN BUSINESS? WE WANT TO SPEND OUR HONEYMOON THERE.

“Oh, God, that gave me a heart attack,” Zack gasped. He had been so focused on figuring out how the bathhouse was the place with the creepiest air to it.

“S-Sorry,” Cloud apologized. “I thought maybe we could find something out from these.”

“Nah, I’ve listened to those before. Apparently, this place had some shady activities going on in it. But in the end, it was just a little parcel of wrist bands.” He came back to the entrance then looked down the hall that took customers to the real attraction. “Cloud, stay close to me, got it? I’d question the integrity of the architecture.”

Cloud didn’t hesitate to run back to Zack’s side. The two walked into the bathhouse, which depicted a very different scene than what they remembered from their first time there. On the shattered and dirty floor before them, a couple of corpses lay bloodied and spread eagle. Their faces had been destroyed, but they were white coats. Thankfully, no one wearing a black suit was around. Reno wasn’t among them.

“Murder?” Cloud guessed.

Zack made his way to the bodies. Even though both of them were used to death and battlefields, something about these corpses were odd. Neither of them were coroners, but Shin-Ra had sent them on their own to investigate, and Reno wasn’t there now. Zack gingerly touched the body as if to make sure the scientist was dead.

First, he looked over the bodies for any other obvious signs of trauma. The face had been torn off, but it didn’t seem like that was the cause of death. There were no other signs on the body even when they flipped the body over. Without the proper tools and knowledge, they couldn’t perform an autopsy…and they didn’t want to.

Cloud peered closer at the would-be face. “I think…he was dead before this happened,” he guessed. “The edge of the skin here isn’t clean-cut, and the fat around the cheeks and eyes are exposed. Looks partially dissolved.”

“Couldn’t be acid or anything,” Zack followed along.

“Right. I think monsters in the area may have just been feeding on them.” Cloud looked again. “But…some parts still look fresh. Even for a place cold like this—the body would at least have some sort of frost on it.”

“Died recently?”

“I think so.” He glanced at the fingers. “Fingers still have color to them.”

“What the hell…?”

The other body was similar. No visible signs of the cause of death, no discerning of the manner of death, and the torn face was most likely caused by monsters feeding on him. The two stepped back from the corpses to look around more. There was no blood around, and had they known that they would be investigating a possible murder, they would have brought blood-detecting chemicals like luminol to find traces. But nothing else was out of the ordinary compared to their last visit.

Still, they needed to find Reno. Cloud made his way to the boiler room while Zack scouted the rest of the bathhouse portion. The place was small, so if either one of them had gotten into trouble, the other could come to the rescue in no time.

Cloud searched the boiler room for any evidence of a struggle leading to the deaths of the scientists or clues that would tell him where Reno was. A wheel used to control the temperature of the water had been placed, the steam shut off. He peeked his head out of large hole in the wall leading up to where Zack had been forced to kill Angeal. Then he returned to the center of the boiler room.

“Nothing,” he whispered to himself. “Damn.” He walked back to the main part of the bathhouse to regroup with Zack. Much to his surprise and macabre dismay, he found him on the floor unmoving. “Zack!” He scrambled to his side, pulling him into his lap, and examining him. “Can you hear me!?”

Cloud found red marks like hands wrapped around his neck. Lowering his ear to his mouth, he listened for him to breathe. They came as little gasps, his face contorting more and more. Cloud’s heart thumped hard in his chest. Without a better idea than to run away as fast as possible from the bathhouse, he leaned Zack on his shoulder and calmly guided him out. But when he got to the entrance of the bathhouse, he found himself crossing the threshold back into the building.

“W-What the hell…?” he stuttered. “What’s going on?”

A chill vastly different from the cold outside befell him. It settled in his bones and filled him with an impending dread that would have stopped even the bravest SOLDIER. Cloud wasn’t sure what to do, and clearly staying put was a bad idea. He thought that maybe they could escape through the boiler room until he remembered that the boiler room was bordered by a cliff and trees. He needed to get out of the bathhouse regardless of where he could go. Something evil was there.

“Hang on, Zack,” Cloud said.

He led him to the boiler room only to find that that had changed as well. Instead of it, there was debris everywhere. Grasses and weeds had started poking through the cracked foundation of the building, and windows were shattered from the extreme cold. The panels of the ceiling had crashed down in various places, tables were overturned from the force of falling objects loosened by the decay, and there was an earthy but musty smell thanks to the stagnant water that had collected in little craters in the broken floor.

Zack let out a gasp, choking on the air that rushed into his lungs and stung him from the inside. Cloud lowered him to the ground then patted his back. “Are you alright?” Cloud asked him. Zack nodded while still coughing. “Do you know what happened to you?” Zack shook his head.

When he was able to finally catch his breath, he glanced at Cloud. “I don’t know what happened, but suddenly something started to strangle me…” he rasped. He tugged down his turtleneck so that Cloud could clearly see the rest of the deep-red handprints on his neck. “Did you find anything?”

“N-No—Zack, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Maybe…” He cleared his throat. “Let’s get moving. We’ve got to find Reno before something happens to him.”

Cloud knew that they had to stick together while in this strange bathhouse, not that they wouldn’t be together in the first place. They preferred to be in each other’s company when possible, and for once, this would weigh on their survival until they could escape. The infantryman worried about his superior, though. The red marks on his neck made his stomach churn. Then he had an epiphany.

“Zack, let’s go back to those corpses,” he suddenly said. “They’re might be something more to how they died, and I think it might have something to do with the marks on your neck.”

Zack didn’t protest. Together, they went back to where they had found the corpses, and once there, Cloud returned to their sides. Carefully, he turned the head to the side, and sure enough, he had found the evidence he was looking for. Both scientists had been strangled just like Zack had almost been. But who was strangling them? And had they already killed Reno?

The two walked together, hand in hand for safety, through the lobby again. The answering machine was still blinking, and nothing else had really changed, but they thought it was a good idea to look around for any clues they might have missed. As they picked through the debris, Cloud kept glancing at Zack in an effort to keep tabs on his health. Since he had been choked, he had been moving sluggish as if he were still suffering from the attack. He returned to the pile of garbage he was digging through, clutching at his gun in a silent vow that he would protect him.

“Cloud!” Zack called to him. At once, Cloud was ready to fire on anything or anyone that threatened to hurt him only to find him holding up a small photograph. “Found something.” The infantryman relaxed. “Little jittery there?”

“When it comes to you being safe,” Cloud huffed. He walked over to him with curious eyes. “A picture?”

“Looks like a party of some sort.”

The picture showed a man, a woman, two daughters, and a baby boy. They were holding luggage. One of the daughters was wearing a fancy dress while her family wore plain clothes. The photograph was old, though. They couldn’t even guess when it was taken.

“It’s weird that an establishment like this would take a picture of some of the guests,” Cloud conjectured. “Unless they were friends of the owners, it seems like it would a foreshadowing of something bad…”

“Maybe, or maybe because it was this girl’s birthday.”

Zack examined the picture again before feeling dizzy. He wavered a bit, the picture falling from his fingers, before he fainted. Cloud immediately rushed to his side, exposing his neck only to find that the marks had turned even darker red like old blood. Assuming the worst, he bent down, locked lips with him while pinching his nose closed, and blew into his lungs. At once, Zack gasped and coughed as the wringing feeling around his neck subsided. He was clearly exhausted from the lack of oxygen—whether he was choked by whatever entity was haunting him or by the stifling atmosphere inside the bathhouse—and it hurt Cloud terribly to see him suffering like this. It was only the beginning, too.

The infantryman knew they needed to keep pushing forward to find Reno, but the toll that these mysterious attacks were taking on Zack worried him. If the corpses they had found had strangulation marks on their necks, did that mean that he was slowly being choked? It had to. He led him to the edge of the stage in the lobby for a break.

“We don’t have time to stop,” Zack told him.

“We do if it means you can catch your breath,” Cloud scolded him. “We need to figure out how to move. If we keep finding clues, we’ll find Reno, but it’ll be pointless if you’re killed in the process. Besides…I don’t do ghosts.”

“Ghosts?” Zack sputtered. “You think we’re dealing with paranormal activity?”

Cloud pouted at him. It was the only explanation he could think of, especially since the timing was far too convenient. When they found the bodies, that was when Zack started getting attacked. When they found the picture, he was attacked again. The sickeningly thick atmosphere, the subtle but eerie feeling that they were being watched, Reno’s disappearance—all of these things were indicators of something outside of the realm of logic. As much as he hated ghosts, he was going to be brave for Zack’s sake. He took his hand.

“I’ll protect you, Zack, so don’t worry,” Cloud pledged to him.

“A-Ah, Cloud…you don’t have to be so…”

“I promise, I won’t let the ghost hurt you anymore!”

Zack grinned at him, placing a hand on his head then patting him before leaning in to kiss him on the forehead. He asked if they could get going regardless of how he felt. The quicker that they solved mystery and rescued Reno, the safer they would be. But things weren’t as easy or simple as that.

Cloud and Zack made their way to where customers once stored their belongings. Some shoes and clothes had been left behind somewhat preserved by the freezing temperatures. The family that had been in the picture had luggage, and Cloud wondered if that would be a clue. Rummaging through the debris and leftover items, he tried to remember what it looked like. He could have easily gone to get the picture again, but he didn’t want to risk Zack getting hurt again. The picture itself had to be cursed—just like the bathhouse.

“Why would someone curse this place?” he mumbled.

“Curse?”

Cloud realized he was talking a little too loud. Though, he was sure that was the case. Something terrible had to have happened to that family, and someone in it or a relative had to have blamed the establishment for it to be cursed. Still, it was too early to tell, and the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to run away. He couldn’t stand ghosts.  
Zack was a little apprehensive after hearing him mention a curse, however. He was normally able to steel himself, but the marks around his neck had shaken him. They hadn’t tightened around him yet, but he was sure that if they ventured too far, whatever had clamped around him would return.

“Zack?” Cloud uttered. He stood in front of him, holding his hand. “Do you remember what the luggage looked like?”

Despite the episode he had had after looking at the picture, Zack did recall the type of luggage being carried. There had been one that stood out from the others. The family had dark-colored suitcases and bags, but the woman in the picture had a white one that closed like a coin purse. Cloud nodded, understanding now what to look for, then returned to the lockers and shelves. After moving other items aside, he found the white bag. Quickly, he pulled it out and set it on the floor so both of them could search through it.

“W-What the hell? Why are these in there?!” Cloud gasped. Inside the bag, there was a scarlet set of lingerie as well as a pair of smaller white panties. The infantryman looked away from the items out of embarrassment. “Hold on a minute.”

“You realized it, too?” Zack asked him. He carefully pulled the underwear from the bag. “One of these…”

“Isn’t like the other,” Cloud finished. “Why would children’s underwear be mixed with her stuff?”

“She was their mom.”

“But everyone had a suitcase, including their kids. The fact that there was even a picture of the family is suspicious. I think this little family vacation was something else.”

“Then it’s another clue to figuring out what happened here?”

Cloud nodded. His faced both darkened and softened. “How…are you feeling?” he asked hesitantly. “You haven’t felt anything trying to choke you again, right?”

Zack grinned at him. “Nope, I’m peachy-keen! But we still have to be careful. We found out a dirty little secret.” He stuffed the underwear back into the bag. “Think we should split up again? Cover more ground now that we’ve kind of got our bearings?”

Cloud quickly reached for his hand, holding it to his cheek once it was in his grasp. The last thing he wanted to do was to split up and run the risk that Zack would get hurt again. And the secret left behind by the woman in the picture bothered him. If there really was a ghost latching onto Zack and slowly killing him, could it have really killed Reno?

Cloud went through the two clues in his mind again while still holding Zack’s hand to his face. The bathhouse had been abandoned, but not before a certain family had come to visit for their daughter’s birthday. The owners of the bathhouse had taken their picture, but the mother had a different suitcase than everyone else in the picture. Inside that suitcase, there was a set of red adult lingerie as well as a child’s pair of underwear. Those were the only two clues, and he didn’t like what they were insinuating what had happened in the bathhouse.

He led Zack back to the reception desk in the lobby, hopping over the counter to make sure there wasn’t anything left in this area of the bathhouse. He found a small piece of paper with some sort of number and a time written on it. After showing it to Zack, both of them believed it was safe to assume the worst. It wasn’t just some birthday vacation. It was something far more insidious and disgusting. They wondered where the rooms were, though. It was a bathhouse, not a motel…at least, they had thought so. Next to the note was a map that led to little hostels for guests that had nowhere to go. They were rented out on a nightly basis, and the sneaking suspicion that had arisen from the previous clues felt more and more like a cold truth.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking…?” Zack slowly said as he turned with dark eyes to face Cloud.

“How could they…?” Cloud said just before a whisper. Shaking his head, he thought about the poor girl who just wanted to have a fun birthday. “How could her own mother do that to her?

“We should go to that room.”

“What if we find—no, we’ve come this far. If we go to that room—”

The marks around Zack’s neck suddenly got so dark that it looked like his skin was necrotizing. The SOLDIER collapsed, gasping for breath as whatever entity was haunting him had finally snapped. Cloud, startled by Zack’s sudden rasping, hurried to him. But what could he do against the vengeful ghost of the little girl?

“Let him go!” he demanded. “Stop hurting Zack! He didn’t do anything to you! We’re trying to help you!”

Something clattered down the hall that drew Cloud’s attention from his partner. Two bloodhound monsters walked into the room they had been attacked in, eyes glowing with hunger. Cloud immediately pulled his rifle to shoot them down before they tried to grab them, but the entity surrounding Zack kicked it out of his hands. The gun went off, shooting up the wall and across the ceiling before the bloodhounds snarled and lunged at them.

One of them latched onto Cloud’s arm and sank its teeth into his flesh. Yelping in agony, Cloud punched the monster’s snout repeatedly only to feel like it was digging deeper and deeper into his arm. He glanced over at Zack, finding him trying to protect his neck from the bloodhound that had gone after him.

And as suddenly as the two bloodhounds and the ghost had attacked them, two gunshots thundered through the bathhouse. The two monsters dropped dead and Zack was freed from the ghost’s wrath for just the moment. Cloud held his torn bleeding arm as he stumbled over to his partner.

“Are you okay?!” Cloud asked him.

“Y-Yeah…for now…” Zack coughed.

Cloud threw his arms around him despite how badly he had been injured. He was just relieved that he was okay for now. But who was it that had saved them?

“Alright, lovebirds…” Reno panted behind them. He also had the marking around his neck and was bleeding from his head. “We need to get out of here. I ain’t doing ghosts—not after this bullshit.”

“We can’t leave yet,” Cloud said. He forgot about his arm; all he wanted was to lay the ghost of the girl to rest by figuring out what had happened in the end. He could only imagine what her fate turned out to be, but he thought that if they uncovered the truth, then it would bring peace to her. “Let’s go to that room.”

“Are you outta your mind?” Reno asked him. “I’ve been in some weird dimension for God knows how long, and Zack is being strangled—why?”

“Because if we left now, there’s no telling what could happen.”

Reno let out an exasperated sigh before pulling out a small emergency medical kit to bandage his head and Cloud’s arm. Zack’s leather gloves had protected his hands from the bloodhound’s teeth, but his neck looked gruesome.

Cloud led them to the room indicated on the note they had found. While none of them were particularly attuned to the gravity of shattered souls, his normal anxiety spiked into an overwhelming nausea. Still, he pushed through it. When he opened the door, he was both shocked and not. No, perhaps he had been hoping that he was wrong.

Zack and Reno filed into the room after him, a wave of horror washing over them. Before the three of them, the remains the little girl were rotting in the center of the room. It was a musty skeleton, but there were fractures and dents in the skull. Her legs had been broken as well.

“It was true, then,” Zack hesitantly said.

“Yeah…” Cloud replied solemnly.

“What the hell…?” Reno murmured.

The markings on both Zack and Reno’s next had disappeared upon the reveal, and the ghost stood before the three men. She looked exactly as in the picture save for the pale white transparency. She seemed angry and fearful of them at first, but the three of them just watched with pain.

“They did bad things to you, didn’t they…” Zack asked her. “I’m sorry no one helped you…”

“Reno, can we do something about this?” Cloud urged him.

Reno was already on the phone calling for backup to Modeoheim. They couldn’t do much of anything to help the girl now, and while this hadn’t been the reason that the town was abandoned, it was a gruesome discovery.

Cloud approached the ghost girl, kindness in his eyes that the girl hadn’t seen in a long time. He gently took her hands. He had never been fond of children, but knowing that this girl had ended up betrayed by her mother hurt him. After all, this little girl had been trapped for years in a carousel of agony, waiting for someone to at least find her.

The mission was marked a failure because the objective hadn’t been met. The three who had discovered the girl asked that the remains be dealt with properly, and Cloud urged that they try to look deeper into the case. If the girl’s parents were still alive, he wanted her to get justice. But it wasn’t up to him to decide where resources were spent. The girl had been dead for a long time—any trace of DNA was surely destroyed by now, and Zack knew that as soon as they moved what was left out of Modeoheim, it would rot away into nothingness so fast that she would truly be just a memory. It was unfair. Cloud hated that there was nothing they could do but hope that by finding her and removing her from where she met her untimely end that she could find peace.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written a couple months back and lacks a decent ending due to the stress of school. Still, the meat of it feels pretty decent, and I'll work on giving it a proper ending in the future.
> 
> Also, does Shin-Ra have ANY sort of forensics team? Do they just send the Turks out for that stuff? How do they deal with murder? Law? I NEED ANSWERS.


End file.
